Even if solar and wind capacity continues to grow at breakneck speed, it will not be fast enough to cap global warming under two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the target set down in the landmark 2015 Paris climate treaty, they reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.

"The rapid deployment of wind, solar and electric cars gives some hope," lead author Glen Peters, a researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway, told AFP.

"But at this stage, these technologies are not really displacing the growth in fossil fuels or conventional transportation."

Earth is overheating mainly due to the burning of oil, gas and especially coal to power the global economy.

Barely 1C (1.8F) of warming so far has already led to deadly heatwaves, drought and superstorms engorged by rising seas.

The 196-nation Paris Agreement set a collective goal to cap warming, but lacks the tools to track progress, especially at the country level.

To provide a better toolkit, Peters and colleagues broke down the energy system into half-a-dozen indicators—GDP growth, energy used per unit of GDP, CO2 emissions per unit of energy, share of fossil fuels in the energy mix, etc.

What emerged was a sobering picture of narrowing options.

Barely a dent

"Wind and solar alone are not sufficient to meet the goals," Peters said.

The bottom line, the study suggests, is how much carbon pollution seeps into the atmosphere, and on that score renewable have—so far—barely made a dent.

Investment in solar and wind has soared, outstripping fossil fuels for the first time last year. And renewables' share of global energy consumption has increased five-fold since 2000.

But it still only accounts for less than three percent of the total.

Moreover, the share of fossil fuels—nearly 87 percent—has not budged due to a retreat in nuclear power over the same 15-year period.

Even a renewables Marshall Plan would face an unyielding deadline: To stay under 2C, the global economy must be carbon neutral—producing no more CO2 than can be absorbed by oceans and forests—by mid-century.

Compounding the challenge, other key policies and technologies deemed essential for holding down temperatures remain woefully underdeveloped, the study cautioned.

In particular, the capacity to keep or pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it securely—a cornerstone of end-of-century projections for a climate-safe world—is practically non-existent.

Vetted by the UN's top climate science panel, these scenarios presume that thousands of industrial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities will be up-and-running by 2030.

As of today, there are only one or two, with a couple of dozen in various stages of construction.

Negative emissions

Another form of clean energy pencilled into most medium- and long-term forecasts that does not yet exist on any meaningful scale is carbon-neutral biofuels.

The idea is that CO2 captured while plants grow will compensate for greenhouse gases released when they are burned for energy.

On paper, that carbon pollution will also be captured and stored, resulting in "negative emissions"—a net reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere.

But here again, reality is dragging its feet.

"It is uncertain whether bioenergy can be sustainably produced and made carbon-neutral at the scale required," the researchers noted.

All of these technologies must come on line if we are to have a fighting chance of keeping a lid of global warming, which is currently on track to heat the planet by 3C to 4C (5.4F to 7.2F), the study concluded.

Market momentum alone is not enough, Peters added.

"There need to be a shift in focus," he said in an email exchange.

"Politician seem happy to support wind, solar and electric vehicles through subsidies. But they are not willing to put prices"—a carbon tax, for example—"on fossil fuels."

"Unless the emissions from fossil fuels goes down, the 2C target is an impossibility."

In an informal survey last week of top climate scientists, virtually all of them said that goal is probably already out of reach.

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53 comments

Stopping the population growth is probably the best way to survive and beat global warming.We are going to lose much farmland and populations will need to use less resources. Currently we are betting on undiscovered technologies to maintain the worlds growing population.If these are not discovered the population will reduce but by wars and famine.A temporary reprieve can be obtained by geo-engineering, but if we look 100 years to the future other technologies will be required.

"The rapid deployment of wind, solar and electric cars gives some hope,"

Another ignorant statement by a supposed "environmental researcher." Do these environuts not understand that the electricity needed to charge all these glorified golf carts still comes from fossil fuels, which Obama has waged war on for 8 years?

Wait until it costs $400 to fill up your 60 mile capacity battery. But not to worry - soon these go-carts will have $30,000 optional solar paint with millions of embedded nano-fans to increase your range to a whopping 60.1415 miles per charge.

The answer in the short/intermediate term is nuclear power. However, because the leftist media obscenely over-hyped and distorted the faux meltdown at Three Mile Island, where plant workers were exposed to an equivalent radiation dosage of less than the commuter at Grand Central Station gets from the granite, the scientifically ignorant public is now terrified to death of anything with atoms in it.

Colbourne, I hope you understand where all the population growth is coming from. It's not the evil white-privileged in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia. They're reproducing at far under replacement rate already.

No, the highest population growth is in Middle Eastern Muslim nations and sub-Saharan Africa. What are we supposed to do - put birth control drugs in their water supplies and tell them it's fluoride for their teeth? Maybe we could ask for a couple billion people to voluntarily commit Seppuku; yeah, that'll work.

Do these environuts not understand that the electricity needed to charge all these glorified golf carts still comes from fossil fuels

The point here (which is very simple to understand) is that the energy CAN come from, renewables. Whereas the energy for fossil fueled cars cannot (also something pretty simple to understand). So with a transition to electric vehicles (or even hydrogen fuel cell vehicles) the transport sector CAN become clean. If we don't transition to these then it cannot.

Wait until it costs $400 to fill up your 60 mile capacity battery.

Pure hyperbole.The cost of 'fueling up' an EV (including transmission and storage losses) are already only half that of doing so using fossil fuels. What do you expect? That fossil fuels will become cheap? They can only go up in price because they are a finite resource.

geo wants desperately to believe the PV panels and EV are not good for us, even though they saved us $3000 last year in energy costs. That is a four-year payback or a return of 20-25%, since they cost just over $12,000.

But the best part is the filling up at home and paying 3 cents/mile if we used power company power instead of the PV. Geo will love his EV as he hates me for having one.

My system works better than yours, and is better for society. Producing power in the PV cells and putting it directly into the grid saves significant energy because there are no transmission and very low distribution losses.

At night, when I take it out to charge the car, it is at the best time for the power company and me, too. Clean, Willie. No specialized and highly-trained engineers needed at my place. No chance of it melting down, is there?

Build the system and get fuel and emissions-free power. Scares you, doesn't it?

My system works better than yours, and is better for society. Producing power in the PV cells and putting it directly into the grid saves significant energy because there are no transmission and very low distribution losses.

At night, when I take it out to charge the car, it is at the best time for the power company and me, too.

Wow! Your system is amazing! It works by converting your fibs into perpetual motion to power your house, your car, and the entire state. Fantastic!

No, Willie I found out it has become practical to go clean, and since that is my field, I did it. It pays off much faster than I had expected, and we are delighted. Our next car will also be electric, with more range.

You could do it too, if you were not so emotionally-invested in nukes.

That's some serious special pleading. Internal combustion engines do not require -fossil- fuels, and fuel cells are a thing as well.

The point against electric cars is the massive inconvenience and a waste of resources and money that is the battery, which usually gets charged up on fossil fuels derived electricity because the use pattern doesn't match with e.g. sunlight. Like gkam here, people are burning the midnight oil charging up their cars and then pretending to be green.

The battery electric vehicle will simply be obsoleted by synthetic fuels made out of renewable energy, biomass, and nuclear power if there's any common sense left in people.

Build the system and get fuel and emissions-free power. Scares you, doesn't it?

When you turn on a charger at night, a powerplant increases its output by that much and emits CO2 and other pollution. Should you not turn your charger on, that emission would not happen.

Ergo your imaginary electric car is not green. Offsetting the emissions at another time doesn't count because you're still emitting CO2. You can't avoid it. The system doesn't work as you pretend. If everybody did like you do, there would still be CO2 emissions from fossil fuels -because- of what you actually do.

You're like an alcoholic bragging that you're down to two glasses of whiskey a night from three, thinking that absolves you of the fault. Though the bigger problem is that you're simply lying about both your electric car AND your solar panels, as proven by others time and time again.

Sorry, Eikka, I win. If you still drive an ICE powered by fossil fuels, you lose.

You do not get it. I offset the most inefficient and most polluting plants in the daytime, and take the power back at night, when the utility uses its most efficient plants only. Everybody wins, even you, who do not have to breathe that nasty stuff.

If everybody did what i did, we could shut down many peaking plants. Do you have a professional field of your own? Maybe you know about that one.

The Paris Climate Agreement will cost at least $1 trillion per year, and climate activists say it will save the planet. The truth? It won't do anything for the planet, but it will make everyone poorer--except politicians and environmentalists. Bjorn Lomborg explains.A new paper in a prestigious journal proves a 15-year hiatus in global warming. Why is it being ignored?http://blogs.spec...bout-it/

gkam

PV, wind, and hydro are worthy helpers, but can't fill all our needs.Coal is the biggest pollution problem we have, not just for the CO2, but for the mercury, cadmium, lead, uranium, smoke, etc blown into the atmosphere. Even converting to fossil natural gas would be a huge improvement.Current nuclear plants are dangerous or, if acceptably safe, very expensive, and all produce unacceptable amounts of hot waste. Molten salt thorium plants solve all these problems and should be pursued with vigor. Fusion is still in the far future.Electric cars need a sharp improvement in range, and their batteries need longer lives and a lower manufacturing/recycling footprint. There is also considerable potential in fuel cells run on methane or aluminum. Currently technically achievable alternatives include combustion fuels made from aboveground carbon, such as methanol or synthetic gasoline.

Market momentum alone can be efficient to go down emissions with new technology, if the price is smaller than for old technologies, like for any new technology, as for example mobile phones.This study does not consider real new technologies that can appear. It is impossible to predict the future of completely new technologies.We can only consider neglected technologies, as for example heating in winter with the heat of the sun in summer, as working since ten years in Drake Landing solar Community without any heat pump, in a basic solar underground surface geothermy, keeping heat from summer to winter !!www.dlsc.caIt can suppress all fossils fuels emissions for heating and air cooling by conserving cold of winter to cool in summer also. A similar solar geothermy at high temperature can also give electricity night from day and in winter cloudy days using summe heat, 365 days of the year.This is completely neglected and it is very efficient perpetual free after installation.

We have already had fuel cells which run on methane, the first practical ones, in fact. We had Phosphoric Acid cells in use in the late 1970s in San Francisco.

But Aluminum? Really? Show me.

They are called batteries, not fuel cells.

And you call your self the alternate energy engineer consultant, you should be ashamed with your self. No wonder your proton engine company failed to move any farther than your pot induced dreams. Cher, try asking Google-Skippy to help you not look so stupid. And he would be glad to tell you about aluminum sodium hydroxide fuels cells to get hydrogen from water.

gkam

Re: aluminum/air - as they're only rechargeable through replacing the aluminum anode (as opposed to pumping electricity back in) they seem to be more in the category of fuel cell. Not quite yet a solved technology, any more than a 20 year Li-ion cell, but the potential energy density is up there with gasoline, and the materials are common and the "exhaust" is a solid, thus a small enviro footprint is likely. The tech leaders right now seem to be Phinergy and Fuji.Methane fuel cells still emit CO2, but the efficiency of electric motors (90% vs 25% for ICEs) means total emissions could be substantially reduced. I'm not sure why they haven't made more progress in the market, outside of foot-dragging by manufacturers.

Let's get back to discussing how we can get the climate goals using renewables.

Intermittent renewables are unable to get rid of fossil fuels, a fiasco in terms of decarbonization, e.g. Germany, California, Vermont, etc., while France and Sweden are a success in terms of CO2 reduction thanks to carbon-free nuclear power.

"The anti-nuclear movement should be renamed the pro-climate change movement.""The loss of Vermont Yankee's carbon-free nuclear energy and the increased use of gas- and oil-fired generation in New England helped drive an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2015 compared to 2014, according to a new report from the grid operator.""New England CO2 emissions spike after Vermont Yankee nuclear closure" - Feb. 6, 2017http://www.utilit.../435520/

Let's get back to discussing how we can get the climate goals using renewables

Naw lets stick with the evidence that you're not only a psychopath, youre an incompetent one.

"Aluminum-Power Develops Al-Fuel CellElectrical Construction and MaintenanceEC&M StaffOct 01, 2000Canadian-based Eontech Group Inc.'s premier subsidiary company, Aluminum-Power, has developed proprietary technology in the design, chemistry, and manufacturing of aluminum and oxygen fuel cells for the advancement of alternative power sources."

-Theres also this;

"This paper reports upon the viability of using these compressed aluminum flakes with hydrogen peroxide in a fuel-cell system."

Yes, to produce hydrogen for a fuel cell system. You could do it with water and sodium, or calcium, even. It is just producing the hydrogen for the fuel cell part of their device which they call a fuel cell because the active part of the device is the fuel cell itself, not the means for producing the hydrogen.

Depressing. Watching these Trump-like personal-grudge/ignoramuses trolling their ego/malice agendas instead of just sticking to the science/logics of the issues raised?

For example, note Ira-Ghost still trolling their malicious personal agendas against gkam. Why? To what end?

It only demonstrates that Ira-Ghost are trolls who don't care about the facts, the science or the humanity interests for the greater good. Obviously they care only for their own ego-tripping stupidity at all costs to others.

They demonstrate it above/elsewhere by trolling/bot-dowwnvoting a person/post even when that person/post is correct!

Their 'need' for ego-tripping malice is leading them to look totally stupid; insensible to what is correct and good for humanity.

Their malice/bias leads Ira, Ghost et al to misunderstand their own 'references' while trolling gkam.

It doesn't bode well for humanity, if otherwise 'intelligent' minds can be so ego-malignant as Ira-Ghost. Very Sad.

It only demonstrates that Ira-Ghost are trolls who don't care about the facts, the science or the humanity interests for the greater good.

Cher what that is supposed to mean? I am not a ghost, I am alive and well and kicking. And I will tell you another thing too. I help the scientists and humans every day here. Thanks to me they don't have to look at your volumetrifacations because I skewer you when you come around. I don't get paid to do it either, it is a service I provide for free.

So you can go bode your humans well in the Earthman Playhouse if it's all the same to you.

Yes, to produce hydrogen for a fuel cell system. You could do it with water and sodium, or calcium, even

Al/O2'fuel cells' have been around for decades. If the expert psychopath had known about them or had considered looking them up rather than pretending, he would have bothered to describe the difference.

I still have a small fuel cell here, a toy,really. I can sell it to Ira,or otto for real money, if they have any.

Do the others enjoy seeing you and Ira respond to my posts with hatred and spite? It iis pretty predictable. Fixations are strange, and when they turn to stalking like with Stumpy, they may get to be dangerous to either party.

Intermittent renewables are not saving us from coal, not in Germany, not in Japan, and nowhere. Intermittent renewables means more fossil fuels."Public exposure to radiation resulting from the generation of electricity by nuclear power plants is just a fraction of that from coal-powered plants, according to a report from the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR)."http://www.world-...174.html

It bodes ill for science and humanity, that this Ira-Stumpy-Ghost-troll-gang deludes itself that they are 'blameless', despite it being they who always go 'personal' then pretend it's their victims who are to blame for their gang's too-oft-demonstrated stupidity/malice.

How can otherwise 'intelligent' human beings so 'lose the plot'?

What drives their 'need' for ego-tripping trolling/bot-downvoting despite science/humanity correctness on the part of their victims?

Ghost, Stump and Ira would be better occupied examining themselves and their behaviors/faults; instead of 'projecting' their own ego-tripping stupidity and malice onto their victims in order to 'justify' their own unconscionable behavior on a science/humanity discourse site.

The question is, will that ever happen? If so, let it be sooner rather than later; as it's quite depressing watching such waste of human 'intellect' for 'personal feuds', stalking and ego-tripping/stupidity/malice.

Hi to you too Really-Skippy. How you are Cher? I am good me, could not be better.

It bodes ill for science and humanity, that this Ira-troll-gang BLAH BLAH BLAH and BLAH.

You do not need to worry about the scientists and humans Cher. My job is to make sure they do not have to see your stuffs unless they are just wanting to have something to make fun with. Laissez les bons temps rouler Skippy.

And just above you see for yourself the self-justifying rational' for a bot-voting ignoramus who was forced to admit he was too dumb to be able to remove the bot-voting program from his system/account. And that maliciously dumb ignoramus deludes itself that it's bot-voting/trolling/stalking on a science site is somehow helping anything except to demonstrate how human intellect can go so awry as in the case of the Ira-Ghost-Stumpy gang. It's all there in the record, folks. No wonder humanity/science is in trouble; if such 'cases' are proliferating among the human population and among the science discourse sites. Sad.

gkam

Intermittent renewables can't stop climate change.Carbon-free nuclear power is the way for deep decarbonization. "Nuclear is one of the cheapest options for power generation when lifecycle costs are taken into account.""Nuclear will continue be part of the solution to climate change long into the future. Although public acceptance is a major challenge in some countries, nuclear is likely to contribute to the energy mix for the foreseeable future.""Although in the low carbon context nuclear is sometimes discussed as a stop-gap solution until renewables' intermittency issues can be solved, in fact, its potential as a low carbon power source is much greater than this. Given developments in efficiency and lifecycle and the fact that in many parts of the world, nuclear is now the cheapest power generation option, it should form a critical and permanent component of the low carbon agenda."http://world-nucl...dar.aspx

because STEM graduates are fond of specific information and accurate detailed analysis

this is why your posts are not scientific, nor are they science at all - they're opinionthat and you tend to blatantly lie when cornered with facts, like your above post where you state i keep a dossier: you are the one sending me the BSif you don't want people to read it - stop sending itANDit is public because you lied about the contend of what you sent - multiple times

the rest of your post is nothing but lies already proven false multiple times

so - per your own request to clean up the site and get rid of snipers...

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